Religion and cultural memory: ten studies = Religion und kulturelles gedachtnis

239 Pages·2006·122.355 MB·English

by  Jan Assmann

Cultural Memory
m
the
Present
Mieke Bal and Hent de Vries,E ditors

RELIGION AND CULTURAL MEMORY
Ten Studies
Jan Assmann
Translatedb y RodneyL ivingstone
STANFO RD UNIVERSITY PRESS
STANFO RD, CALIFORN IA
2006

Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
English translation © 2006 by the Board ofTrustees
of the Leland Scan ford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Religiona nd Cultural Memory was originally published in German in 2000
under the title Religionu nd kulturellesG eddchmi,s © Verlag C. H. Beck oHG,
Miinchen 2000.
Assistance for the translation was provided by Inter Nationes.
Assmann, Jan.
[Religion und ku rurelle ~eiliiehtnis~English)
Religion and cultural memory : ten studies/ Jan Assmann ; translated
by Rodney Livingstone.
p. cm. - (Cultural memory in the present)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN0 -8047-4522-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN0 -8047-4523-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Memory-Religious aspects. 2. Memory-Social aspects. 3. Religion
and culture. I. Livingstone, Rodney. II. Title. III. Series.
BL65.M43A87132 005
306.6- oc22
2005024771
Original Printing 2006
Last figure below indicates year of this printing:
15 14 13 I2 II IO 09 08 07 06
Contents
Preface
lX
Introduction: What Is "Culcural Memory "?
r. Invisible Religion and Cultural Memory 31
2. Monotheism, Memory, and Trauma: Reflections
on Freud's Book on Moses
3. Five Stages on the Road to the Canon:
Tradition and Written Culture in Ancient Israel
and Early Judaism 63
4. Remembering in Order to Belong: Writing ,
Memory, and Identity 81
5. Culcural Texts Suspended Between Writing and Speech 101
6. Text and Ritual: The Meaning of the Media for the
History of Religion 122
7. O./ficiumM emoriae: Ritual as the Medium ofThought 139
8. A Life in Quot ation: Thomas Mann and the
Phenomenology of Cultural Memory 155
9. Egypt in Western Memory 178
Notes I9I

Preface
"Being chat can be understood is language": thi uccincc statement
contains Hans-Georg Gadamer's formula for the "ontological turn in
hermeneutics."' The theory of culcural memory, which amounts co a kind
of "ontological turn in tradition ," could be summarized with the words
"Being char can be remember ed is cexr." Language is dialogue, exchange
of views, communication. Text, on the ocher hand, is constitut ed on the
basis of prior communi cation. Ir always involves the past. Memory bridg
es rhe gap between chen and now. The me senger memorizes the mes age
that he is supposed to convey to the recipient; rhe old man remembers
what he was caught by his grandfather and passes it n to his own grand
·on, enriched by his own experience. ln this way "texts" come into being.
Linguisci communicat ion takes place in che course of conver ation; rexes,
however, arise in rhe "extended context" of tradition.' The need to record
t:vents is so great chat from a very early stage mankind has had recour e
1 all sorts of mnemonics and systems of notation with which co fa ilirace
ubsequent access( f hi need has given ri e to writing, and writing has ex
t ·nded rhe fund of memory in leaps and bounds co the point where the
giganric archives of the "fields of memory" can no longer be surveyed.J
I lenneneucics concentrates on che role of understanding by accessing the
text of memorable venrs; rhe theory of cultural memory, in contrast, in
vestigates the condition that enable that text co be established and hand
·<ld own. le draw our attention co the role of rhe past in constitut ing our
world through dialogue and intercommuni cation, and it investigates the
orms in which the past pre encs itself to us as well as the motives that
rro mpt our recourse to it. The theory of cultural memory explores the tex
t ualicy of the past within the linguistic framework of our experience of the
, orld chat hermeneutics has decoded for us. If hermeneutics defines man
as a being that und rstand , the exploration of ultural memory defines
x Prfeace
this understandi ng being as on who remembers. Gadamer himself has re
peatedly argued that all understanding i nurture d by a pre-under standing
that comes from memory.
The ten studies brought together in thi book are ba ed on essays
and lecture from the past seven year . They attemp t ro shed light on the
concept of cultural memory and the questions associated with it from a
variety of different angles. Religion turns our to be a focal point underly
ing the individual studies, whether in a narrower or broader sense. All the
older contr ibutions have been revised, and in places exrensivcly reworked,
so as to avoid repetitions, to bring our commo n themes, and to empha
size new insights. I wish to thank Ernst-Peter Wieckenberg for encourag
ing me ro assemble these essays, Ulrich Nolte for hi meticulous reading
of the whole volume, and Si Ike Moller for her careful and intelligent pro
duction of the index.
Jan Assmann
Heidelberg, February2 000